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The Keystone Initiative for Network Based Education and Research (KINBER) recently received a $150,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that will help fund activities aimed at helping Pennsylvania colleges and universities use their network infrastructure to support scientific applications and research.

Penn State will lead a five-year, $30 million mission to improve quantification of present-day carbon-related greenhouse gas sources and sinks. An improved understanding of these gases will advance our ability to predict and manage future climate change.

Penn State Lehigh Valley was one of three local institutions recently awarded Bosch Community Fund (BCF) grants in support of STEM education. Penn State was awarded a total of $45,000 of which the Lehigh Valley campus received $20,000 to support its Emerging Engineers program. The remaining portion will support University Park's Women in Engineering Program Orientation.

Penn State Great Valley has been chosen as one of Penn State’s five campuses to receive funding from the Reinvention Fund, an internal grant program intended to improve and expand sustainability efforts across the institution.

Water management in the Florida Everglades is the focus of a National Science Foundation grant awarded to Jose Fuentes, professor of meteorology.

The project will explore the hydrologic, ecologic and economic impacts of management strategies designed to increase the resilience of the Everglades ecosystem to climate variability, climate change and sea level rise. This research is part of a larger, ongoing project at Florida International University looking at coastal ecology and hydrology. The Penn State award is for five years at $300,514.

Benjamin Lear, an assistant professor of chemistry, was awarded a 3M Nontenured Faculty Grant. This award, which is administered by 3M Research and Development in partnership with the Corporate Giving Program, recognizes outstanding new faculty. It is intended to help young faculty members to achieve tenure, to teach and to conduct research.

Lear's research focuses on the science of energy conversion and the investigation of chemical reactions involving electron transfer. His research has many practical applications to materials and energy science. The 3M award was given for work that seeks to use the photothermal effect of nanoparticles to drive chemical reactions. This effect allows Lear and his co-workers to raise and lower the local temperature of materials by a few thousand degrees in a matter of nanoseconds. This approach will enable many transformations, both in chemistry and materials science, which are currently either difficult or impossible to accomplish using traditional approaches to synthesis.

Coating a bone graft with an inorganic compound found in bones and teeth may significantly increase the likelihood of a successful implant, according to Penn State researchers. The researchers -- collaborators from the College of Medicine's Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation and the College of Engineering's Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics -- also believe this method could be used for soft musculoskeletal tissue implants and orthopedic device implants.

A $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) has been awarded to principal investigator (PI) Mary Frecker, professor of mechanical engineering, to develop methods to design active origami structures to be used for applications in minimally invasive surgery, adaptive aircraft structures, reconfigurable robots and deployable space structures.

Kristine Artello, assistant professor of administration of justice at Penn State New Kensington, was selected for a teaching grant through Penn State's Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence. Artello's grant project, "Helping Students Succeed in Distributive Classrooms: Engaging Local and Remote Students," will develop a student handbook, activities and lessons to help students transition successfully to the distributive learning model. Distributed learning is an instructional model that involves using various information technologies--video or audio conferencing, satellite broadcasting, and Web-based multimedia formats--to help students learn. The handbook will provide a checklist for students to use and consider when taking these types of classes. The pilot project will begin in the fall in Artello's Organized Crime class, a 400-level course that examines organized crime in terms of historical antecedents, structure, related theories, and policy issues.

Do children suffering from concussions recover faster and have a better prognosis than young adults? Researchers in the Center for Sport Concussion Research and Service at Penn State aim to answer that question with the help of a $100,000 grant from NFL Charities.

The Penn State Justice Center for Research, a cooperative venture of the College of the Liberal Arts and Penn State Outreach's Justice and Safety Institute, has received grant funding to study the issues of successful prisoner reintegration into rural communities under the Center for Rural Pennsylvania's 2012 Research Grant Projects. Re-entry is a primary focus of the criminal justice system, yet research related to the rural context of re-entry -- a significant element of Pennsylvania's corrections landscape -- is sorely lacking.

The Office of Undergraduate Education invites applications for the 2012 Undergraduate Summer Discovery Grant program. The deadline for applications is Feb. 10. It is anticipated that about 25 grants in the amount of $2,500 each will be awarded to Penn State undergraduate students for summer research and creative projects. The grants are supported by an endowment from the Penn State Alumni Association and funding from the Office of Undergraduate Education, with additional sponsorship for some awards from colleges.